BOULDER, COLORADO — The sun’s ‘coronal mass ejections’ will increase significantly over the next four years as it ramps up into the next solar cycle maximum in 2025, according to scientists at the Space Weather Prediction Center who spoke to Space.com.
And one type in particular could have knock-on consequences for our internet connectivity.
Coronal mass ejections are billion-ton clouds of plasma gas with magnetic fields that are ejected by the sun towards the Earth, where they then create geomagnetic storms. However, as their frequency increases, larger CMEs can form when later CMEs ‘catch up’ with those that have been ejected before them and the two merge.
One problem with this is that we can only learn a CME's magnetic field when it reaches the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, so its likely effects are not clear until 20 to 30 minutes before it hits Earth and, at that point, in a worst-case scenario, a cannibal solar storm could push the world into an ‘internet apocalypse’ by knocking out satellites,or undersea cables, according to a new research paper from the University of California, Irvine.
At the same time, oil and gas pipelines, networking cables and power grids would also be vulnerable to being knocked out.